Thank you!

Thanks to your advocacy efforts on our behalf, we're happy to report that the recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill includes a very small increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities! While our work is not over with regards to the upcoming 2018 budget to be passed in the fall, the Omnibus Spending Bill represents an endorsement of the important work that the humanities do for our communities. These funds will continue to support our work of providing free access to authoritative content about Virginia's history and culture.

Readjuster Party

The Readjuster Party was the shortest-lived and most radical reforming
political party in Virginia's history. Founded in February 1879, it won majorities in
both houses of the General Assembly in the legislative election that autumn, and its
candidates won all the statewide offices in 1881. The party rose to power because of
the debt controversy, which
involved disagreements about how to pay almost $34 million in state debt accrued
before the American Civil War
(1861–1865) on internal-improvement projects. By 1871, that number had risen to $45.6
million. The political faction called Funders resisted any reduction on the state debt lest it hurt Virginia's
standing with creditors, while the Readjusters, seeing the debt as threatening
important state programs such as public schools, sought to
"readjust," or reduce the amount of the principal and the rate of interest. With a
coalition of white farmers and working men, Democrats, Republicans, and African
Americans, and under the leadership of the railroad executive and former
Confederate general William
Mahone, the party passed the Riddleberger Act of 1882, which reduced the
principal of the debt and the interest owed. The next year, however, the Readjuster
Party's candidates lost their legislative majorities, and its candidates for
statewide office all lost in 1885, after which the party ceased to function. MORE...

In This Entry

Map This Entry

Share It

Debt Controversy

The Readjuster Party came into being as a result of the prolonged political crisis
of the 1870s while the state government struggled unsuccessfully to pay the
interest on the public debt left over from before the Civil War. Because the state
had paid no interest during the years of the Civil War and Congressional
Reconstruction, by the beginning of 1871 the debt had risen to more than $45.6
million. The General Assembly passed and on March 30, 1871, the governor signed
"An Act to Provide for the Funding and Payment of the Public Debt," which was then
and has thereafter always been known as the Funding Act of 1871. It provided for issuing new
bonds worth two-thirds of that amount (with a promise that the state would pay the
remainder after reaching an agreement with West Virginia about the precise amount that state
owed) to replace all the existing bonds. Bondholders therefore had to exchange
their old bonds for the new bonds, which, like the pre-war debt, paid 6 percent
interest and were to mature in thirty-four years.

The Funding Act appeared to make good, sound business sense. Its supporters
predicted that Virginia's payment of the interest and principal would encourage
bankers and businessmen from outside the state to invest in Virginia and thereby
help stimulate and revive its economy. However, the size of the debt was so large
and the rate of interest so high that payment of the interest required more than
half the annual revenue. Moreover, the Funding Act made the interest-bearing
coupons on the new bonds receivable for taxes, and every dollar paid in taxes with
a coupon was a dollar that the state could not spend to run the government,
support the new public school system, or even pay the interest. By 1872 Virginians
paid about half the state revenue in coupons, and during the remainder of the
decade the state ran large budget deficits.

The assembly reduced the interest rate to 4 percent in 1872, but the state's
financial condition grew worse after the Panic of 1873 brought on a long economic
recession. Tax revenue continued to fall, and revenue collected in money fell even
more, leading to calls for refinancing the debt on more advantageous terms. A
principal argument in favor of refinancing was to provide more money for the
popular new public school system that the Constitution of 1869 created. For
the remainder of the decade Virginians debated whether to refinance the whole debt
or repudiate some of it and try to pay a reduced principal.

Rise of the Readjusters

Advocates of refinancing the debt—adjusting it, or readjusting it—to pay a reduced
principal at a lower rate of interest became known as Readjusters. People who
insisted on paying the full principal and interest were known as Funders. As the
debates about the debt and about the shortage of money available for the schools
became more intense, the state's dominant Conservative Party, founded in 1867 in
opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, split into two factions. White men who
identified themselves as Democrats and as Republicans also split into Funders and
Readjusters. By the end of the 1870s, it is likely that most African Americans in
Virginia, who by then were nearly all Republicans, sympathized with the
Readjusters.

William Mahone, of Petersburg,
emerged as leader of the Readjusters. He was a short man with a long beard and
inexhaustible energy who had commanded Confederate forces at the Battle of the Crater (1864) and
created what became the Norfolk and Western Railroad. Originally a leader in the Conservative
Party and an opponent of the radical reforms of Congressional Reconstruction,
Mahone forged a coalition of politicians from both parties and both races who
opposed the reduction of school appropriations and wished to refinance the debt.
Readjusters appealed to white and black families on the grounds that the Funders
had failed to support the public schools, and specifically to African Americans on
the additional grounds that the Conservatives had imposed a poll tax as a
prerequisite for voting that made it more difficult for black men to vote.

In 1878, Readjusters in the General Assembly passed a bill to require that a
portion of the state's tax revenue be collected in money and not in coupons in
order that the money could be spent on the public schools. It was known as the
Barbour Bill, for its sponsor, James Barbour, a member of the House of Delegates. During debate on the
bill, a Funder member of the Senate of Virginia, John W. Daniel, declared that he would rather see
all the public schools in the state burned than divert money from paying the
creditors in order to support the schools. Governor Frederick W. M. Holliday vetoed the bill
and denounced the public school system as unnecessary. His veto message stated
that tax money should be used to pay the state's creditors and not to fund the
schools.

In the 1879 session of the assembly, the legislators passed a refinancing act
popularly called the McCulloch Act, named for former Secretary of the Treasurer
Hugh McCulloch, who
represented the state's bondholders during negotiations between the government and
the creditors. Readjusters called it the Broker's Bill because they believed that
bond brokers and owners of bonds were the chief beneficiaries. The law provided
that the existing bonds be replaced with new bonds that matured in forty years and
paid 3 percent interest for the first ten years, 4 percent for the next twenty,
and 5 percent for the last ten. They were often referred to as ten-forties or as
McCulloch bonds. The legislature again made the interest-bearing coupons tax
receivable.

Party Founded

In February 1879, Mahone and like-minded men called for a state convention to
found the Readjuster Party. They invited all supporters of readjustment
irrespective of race, and from then until the party ceased to exist, African
Americans held party offices and won election to the General Assembly and to local
offices as Readjusters. The new party also won strong support from white voters in
some of the cities and rural areas, particularly in the mountains and valleys of
western Virginia where the number and percentage of African Americans was smaller
than elsewhere in the state. Opponents of the Readjusters charged then and later
that the party was under the domination of northern Republicans and radical black
men, but that was not the case.

The Readjusters' arguments in favor of the schools and Mahone's organizing skills
produced victories at the polls. In 1879, the Readjusters won majorities in both
houses of the General Assembly, which in 1880 elected Mahone to the U.S. Senate.
The assembly passed a bill to refinance the debt with fifty-year bonds that paid 3
percent interest and repudiated about one-third of the principal established in
the Funding Act of 1871. Called the Riddleberger Bill, it was named for Harrison H.
Riddleberger, a member of the Senate of Virginia from the Shenandoah
Valley. Holliday vetoed the bill, and that set the stage for the next statewide
election.

In March 1881, a
convention of Republicans, all of them African Americans, met in
Petersburg and voted to make an alliance with the Readjusters. The Readjuster
state convention that summer nominated William E. Cameron, mayor of Petersburg, for
governor, and Readjuster candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general.
In the general election, Cameron defeated Daniel, the Conservative Funder
candidate for governor, and Readjusters won all the statewide offices and larger
majorities in the General Assembly.

Early in 1882, the assembly passed and Cameron signed a revised version of the
1880 bill. Known as the Riddleberger Act, it reduced the principal and interest
rate much as Riddleberger's 1880 bill had done and was intended to replace the
bonds issued in 1871 and 1879. The interest-bearing coupons on the Riddleberger
bonds could not be used to pay taxes. Later in the session, the legislators
elected Riddleberger to the other Virginia seat in the U.S. Senate.

The Readjusters appointed auditors who enforced the tax laws strictly, and the
government collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in delinquent taxes.
Readjusters also reduced taxes on farms and small businesses and raised taxes on
corporations and corporate property. Their policies relieved heavily burdened
taxpayers and replenished the state treasury and at the same time more than
doubled the funding for the public schools. The Readjusters also abolished the
poll tax as a prerequisite for
voting, and eliminated the brutal, humiliating whipping post, left over from
slavery days, for punishing African Americans. The Readjusters created what became
Virginia State
University, the South's first publicly supported college for training
African American teachers, they overhauled higher education in the state, and
within two years replaced the Funders' chronic deficits with a surplus in the
treasury.

Early in the 1880s, seven Readjusters also won election to the U.S. House of
Representatives. The Readjuster ascendancy in Virginia politics was as short-lived
as it was dramatic. As soon as the party had accomplished the main task for which
it was founded, refinancing the debt, it began to fall apart. The main reasons
were that the party's leading spokesmen, such as Mahone, Cameron, and
Riddleberger, welcomed African American men into the party as fully enfranchised
citizens and Mahone joined the Republicans. The emerging egalitarian thinking
among the party's leaders appealed to farmers and working class people of both
races, which alienated many white voters and political leaders who opposed
participation of poor men and black men in politics. That raised fears of racial
equality or black domination, which opponents of the Readjusters seized on to
regain control of the General Assembly.

Party's Fall

In 1883, the Conservatives and Funders reorganized themselves as a new state
Democratic Party. In preparation for legislative elections that autumn they
endorsed the Riddleberger Act as the final settlement of the debt controversy in
order to draw white voters away from the Readjusters, and they prepared to
campaign against the Readjusters on the issue of white supremacy. John S. Barbour, president of
the Orange and
Alexandria Railroad and a longtime adversary of Mahone, was the architect
of the new Democratic Party. He was a political organizer as skillful as Mahone. A
few days before the election, a street fight in Danville, where several African
American men held positions of civic responsibility, offered the Democrats an
opportunity to attack the biracial character of the Readjuster movement. What
Democrats called the Danville
Riot allowed them to characterize Readjusters and Republicans as
advocates of black domination. Their strategy undermined the public appeal of the
Readjusters' carefully crafted coalition that was based on economic progress and
fairness, and deliberately muted issues related to race. The Democrats won a large
legislative majority that year and, through a combination of racial appeals and
restrictive electoral regulations, solidified the party's power in subsequent
years.

Two years later, in 1885, the Democratic Party won all the statewide offices,
placing former Confederate general Fitzhugh Lee in the governor's office. The
Readjuster Party then ceased to exist. Most African Americans entered or reentered
the Republican Party and a substantial number of white men who had supported the
Readjusters also became Republicans. The problems with the debt continued,
however, and following a long series of federal and state court cases challenging
the assembly's laws to prevent payment of taxes with coupons, the General Assembly
adopted the Olcott Act of 1892 that withdrew the coupon bonds from circulation and
paid the remainder of the debt that the Riddleberger Act of 1882 had promised to
pay.

Time Line

1822–1861
- Virginia accrues about $34 million in public debt subsidizing the construction of canals, toll roads, and railroads.

1871
- Virginia's pre–Civil War public debt, with interest, totals more than $45.6 million.

March 30, 1871
- The General Assembly passes "An Act to Provide for the Funding and Payment of the Public Debt," or the Funding Act of 1871.

March 1872
- The General Assembly repeals the portion of the Funding Act that permits people to pay taxes with coupons.

February 22, 1878
- The General Assembly passes what comes to be known as the Barbour Bill, after James Barbour. It requires that a portion of the state's tax revenue be collected in money and not in coupons in order that the money can be spent on the public schools. The governor vetoes it.

February 25–26, 1879
- The Readjuster Party is founded at a convention in Richmond with the goal of "readjusting," or reducing the amount the principal of and the rate of interest on the state debt.

March 28, 1879
- The General Assembly passes the McCulloch Act, refinancing the state debt. Opponents dub it the Broker's Bill because they believe bond brokers and the owners of state-issued bonds are the chief beneficiaries.

November 1879
- The Readjuster Party wins majorities in both houses of the General Assembly.

March 1, 1880
- The General Assembly passes a bill to reduce the rate of interest on the debt to 3 percent for fifty years and to repudiate about one-third of the principal. The governor vetoes it.

March 4, 1881
- William Mahone, a Readjuster, begins his term in the U.S. Senate.

March 14, 1881
- Almost 300 African American Republicans convene in Petersburg and decide to endorse the Readjuster Party in the important 1881 general election.

November 1881
- Under William Mahone's guidance, William E. Cameron, of the Readjuster Party, is elected governor.

February 14, 1882
- The governor signs the Riddleberger Act, named after Harrison H. Riddleberger. It provides for fifty-year, 3-percent bonds on the debt, reduces the principal by about a third, and prohibits the payment of taxes with coupons.

1883
- Virginia's Conservative Party changes its name to the Democratic Party and chooses a new leader, John S. Barbour Jr., who organizes the party down to the precinct level. Barbour's leadership marks the beginning of a long era of Democratic domination.

November 3, 1883
- Racial and political tensions erupt in an election-eve street fight in Danville that leaves at least one white and four black men dead.

November 1885
- The Democratic Party sweeps to power, winning all statewide elected offices. The Readjuster Party dissolves, with many of its members becoming Republicans.

March 3, 1887
- William Mahone ends his one term in the U.S. Senate. In the most recent election, his Readjuster Party lost the General Assembly to the Conservatives, who elected John W. Daniel to the Senate.